


Come to California

by aiobheann



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Canon-Typical Drinking, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, because the end made me so sad, i wrote this right after i finished it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:35:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25622992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiobheann/pseuds/aiobheann
Summary: Richard's time on the East coast has given him a headful of loose ends. Francis is afraid of being poor. Together, they can make ends meet.
Relationships: Francis Abernathy/Richard Papen
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67





	Come to California

I must have been half out of my mind, drunk at three in the morning, when I wrote to Francis. I don’t know what else would have allowed me. He says he still has the letter, somewhere, that he brought it with him in case I forgot I’d written it. I know I slipped into Greek and back into English a number of times throughout its composition. All he says of it is that it made him want to come.  
I thought about Francis a lot those months after I saw him in the hospital. I suppose he was the only one I still felt I could write to, with Bunny murdered, Henry dead, Camilla having refused me at last, with that horrible air of finality on the train platform, and Charles, drunk in Texas, the only place I could conjure that was more repulsive to me than Plano, California. As far as I could imagine, Charles might as well have been sentenced to the afterlife along with Bunny and Henry.  
So only Francis remained, and any longing I could have held for the rest of them, long since stifled by regret and disgust, was resigned to rest on him. I did long for him, in those endless California days. The memory of those conversations which had filled me with resignation and claustrophobia at Hampden, the endless needling over any instance of frustration, which then I could only imagine repeating themselves ad infinitum, ad nauseam, in California filled me with regret and nostalgia. I would remember some small remark he’d made in the hospital, some expression which had clouded his face in his sleep, and suddenly be electrified by fondness, a feeling that ran through my core so strongly I’d have to stop, in some card shop or on some sidewalk, and let it hold me until I was allowed to continue.  
Of course, now I can see my blindness, and in recalling these feelings I almost laugh, but then I was so deep in ignorance that it took a lot of gin and many hours of staring at the pen in my hand to write to him. I managed it that one night, and posted the letter the next day. Come to California, I said. We’ll manage. You can stay here while you settle, you can get a job teaching, it won’t be so bad. We won’t be poor, I wrote, and we’ll have our honor to support us. I know I dipped into Greek there, some verse about loyalty thick enough to eat. I don’t remember the rest.

Francis called me from the airport a few weeks later. I knew it was him the instant I picked up, something about the sharp way he inhaled before he spoke.  
“I hope you meant it,” he said, without any introduction. “I’m here.”  
“Thank God,” I said. “Where can I pick you up?”

Francis in a hospital bed on the east coast was very different from Francis in my guest bed on the west. What should I tell you? The infinite qualms about walking out on his fiancée, the scrupulous way he would save loose change, the endless applications he wrote for jobs at the area schools. Californians are not all as voracious for the Classics as I was, I told him as he sat at my kitchen table. His hair was a wild shape from the way he pulled at it in anguish. I set food down in front of him. You’ll find work, I said. Don’t worry. 

I don’t know when I first began to unravel the ciphered messages of my own consciousness. I woke up in the middle of the night sometimes, and I would wish that Francis was there, and I would realize that he was. Once, half asleep, I staggered through the drywall hallways of our small apartment, just to make sure he was in it. I peered at his sleeping form in the guest room, and as I stood in the doorway, he turned to look at me. His form was hazy silver in the half darkness, the planes of his face blended in the yellow shafts of light, the red of his hair dulled in the gray of the night. His eyes glinted in the streetlamp light for just a moment before he closed them again, and turned his face away, sighing. He knew I was looking. We never spoke of it.  
In fact, in those first few weeks in California, we hardly discussed our situation at all. We didn’t talk about him moving out. Despite his obvious hemming and hawing we didn’t speak of money. It’s no wonder that we didn’t discuss the distance that was growing between us.  
It was much like the first few months of our friendship at Hampden. The tension, that time, had been dispelled by his first pass at me. But the comfort I had found in his simple “No?” had left me. The basic relief of his admission of his own lack of interest after our brief dalliance the night of Bunny’s death didn’t rush over me when I replayed it in my head.  
“Isn’t that interesting.” His cool tone. “I’m really not attracted to you, either.”   
I’m sure I knew it in smaller parts, over time, but as I remember it, it clattered into my mind all at once.  
I was standing at the counter, making breakfast. He had an interview at a school that day, and I was due at my job within the hour. He was slumped at the table, his hands trembling with nerves but his body slack with exhaustion. He had barely slept.  
“Richard,” he said, “I can’t eat, I’ll be sick.”  
“It’ll help your stomach, François,” I said, and he cut his eyes to me in contempt, I suppose at the nickname, and that intensity of tenderness poured down my spine and paralyzed me. I stared at him, blankly enthralled.  
“What,” he said, roused from his self-concerned nervousness. “Richard?”  
I knew it then. I knew it from the way I wanted to touch his face, to close the ravenous gap between us.  
“Oh, God,” I said, overcome.  
“What,” Francis said, his head falling slightly to the side in a way that made my stomach burn, “Did you realize this interview is doomed?”  
I came home from work at lunch, too occupied to focus. I poured myself one drink, then another, and by the time Francis returned from his interview, I was quite drunk.  
His face was shining.  
“That went rather well,” he said, slapping his briefcase onto the table, “as far as I can discern.”  
I smiled at him, and he squinted at me.   
“Aren’t you at work right now?”  
“Too drunk,” I said.   
“Why’re you drinking?”  
“I was there,” I said.  
“What?”  
“After,” I drew a great big breath, truncating my sentence and letting the pause sit on the table. After Bunny, I meant to say. You said I was there. That was all. I was there and isn’t that interesting. I’m really not attracted to you either. Oh, God.  
“Let’s go for a drive,” Francis said.  
I laughed, “Francis. It’s Los Angeles.”  
He sat down at the table and poured himself a drink. “You were there,” he repeated, but it wasn’t the same lifeless declaration, the same dismissal. “You were there,” he said again, “when I needed somewhere to run and a new future to imagine and,” he looked at me, cautious, “thank you. Thank you for being here for me.”  
The ravine between us made him cautious. We were both afraid of it, afraid of what would happen if it collapsed. I was afraid of it, even wanting -- God. Even wanting.

“I’m drunk,” Francis said. “Oh, this bottle is so empty. Oh, we’re so poor.”  
“I like being poor with you,” I said. “It’s better than being out here alone.”  
“Is that why you wrote? So you wouldn’t be alone?”  
“No, I,” I stopped, laughed. “I missed you.”  
“I don’t understand why you would miss us,” he said.  
“Francis.” His eyes cut to me. My stomach dropped. “You. Singularly.”  
He opened his mouth, and then shut it without saying anything. I moved to talk, and he inhaled, sharp.  
“Watch out,” His eyes held mine, and I could feel my pulse in my underarms, “or I might think you’re making a pass at me.”  
“A lot of good that would do me,” I said. He frowned.  
“What?”   
I mumbled, drunk, “Isn’t that interesting.” I slumped, my head settling onto the table, “I’m really not attracted to you either.”  
“What?” he said again. “Are you angry with me?”  
“No, I’m.” Oh, God. Oh, God. “Francis.”  
“Richard?”  
“Why did you come out here?”  
“You asked me to. Are you angry? I needed somewhere to go, I couldn’t…” he stopped. We sat in silence until he began to speak again. “Sometimes, Charles would say things and I would, I would almost think that… that I wasn’t just a stand in. That I was distinguishable to him, distinct.”  
“Did you love him? Do you love him?” I picked my head up, trying to read his face.  
“No.” We stared at each other. “I wanted him to love me, though. It’s easy to… It’s easy to confuse the two when you’re… when you lie to yourself. We were all lying to each other, Richard.”  
“About what?”  
“All of it. I told you so many lies.”  
“Like what?”  
He stared at me, his mouth red and his cheeks flushed, and for a moment I almost thought of Camilla, but it wasn’t her. It was that impulse again, to close the distance, an impulse that I’d come to associate with her, the impulse to ignore the ravine. To ignore the tragedy behind us and the distance between us and, oh, God. I wanted to kiss him so badly.  
“Ask me when you’re not drunk.”  
“What?”  
“And I’ll tell you the truth.”

“I’m not drunk.” It was Saturday morning. We hadn’t spoken on Friday. I’d stayed late at work and he’d been asleep when I got home.  
“Me neither. We finished that bottle.”  
“I’m not drunk. Tell me the truth.”  
“Oh.”  
I was in a kind of vicious mood. I stared at the floor of his room, waiting. What else had they hidden from me? What else had I been blind to? What joke had I unknowingly played the fool of?  
“Do you remember the night Bunny died?”  
“Obviously.”  
“No, I mean,” he paused. “Richard, look at me. Do you remember after? In your room.”  
This was unbearable to me. I stared at him.  
“Charles was -- There wasn’t any --” he stopped again, and trained his eyes on the ratty coverlet on his bed. The guest room bed. I stared at the top of his head, imagining, unwittingly, how his red hair might feel between my fingers.  
“I came to your room because I wanted to see you. To do what we did. And when Charles came, and he and I went to bed together, it. I wasn’t the only one standing in for someone else. Do you see? And then you said, when we were. You said you weren’t -- so I let it go. I lied. At the hospital, I thought maybe. We talked about Canada, I thought maybe -- but we were both too scared. And now here I am, and I’m terrified, and I came out here for you, really, there’s no -- No one else could make this -- I wouldn’t have done this for just anyone. You were here, so. I came here too. And now I have to leave, because. You’re really not attracted to me. And really, it’s not fair to pretend I’m here on the square, to escape some forced marriage, I would have gone through with it but I thought. I thought it would be good, we’re friends, I. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”  
I was shocked. He was all the way across the room. It was unbearable to me. I stared at the floor. I swallowed. He moved to get up, he walked towards me. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes. I was unbearably stupid. I turned and let him pass. 

Francis stood in my doorway in the darkness that night, after being absent the whole day. I rolled onto my back and looked at him.   
“François,” I said, “are you drunk?”  
“Are you mad at me?”  
“Are you drunk?” I sat up on the edge of the bed.  
“I’m sober. Are you angry?”  
“You’re so much braver than me.” I stood.  
“What?” He shrunk in the doorway.  
“Braver,” I said, and crossed the room.   
“Than you? No. Stupider.”  
“Less blind, then,” I stood near him, beyond the squares of light the street lamp threw on the floor.   
“That’s what these are for,” he said, tapping his pince nez with one finger. The finger was shaking.  
“I know for a fact that those are fake.”  
“I tell so many lies, Richard.”  
“So stop.”  
“Tell me the truth.”  
“Okay.”  
“Are you angry with me?” My heart burned in my chest.  
“No, Francis.”  
“Tell me the truth.”  
“The truth is,” I trembled at the edge of the drop, “I asked you to come because I wanted you here. Singularly you. And, I suppose, I wanted to. To know you differently from the rest of them. Distinctly.”  
He shut his eyes. My stomach was electric. I touched him, stupidly, two fingers resting on his cheekbone. His skin was so pale he glowed in the gray of the night. He looked up at me. He was unbearably beautiful.  
Kissing Francis should not have been so shocking, as I had done it once before without feeling much of anything, but kissing Francis drunk after a murder on the east coast is different than kissing him sober and safe on the west. I shook as I closed the difference between us, nervous, and he trembled against me. Our mouths met smoothly. He tasted like coffee and cigarettes. Every move he made against my mouth sent new shocks of that terrifying endearment through me, so much so that several times I took his face in my hands and drew back to look at him.   
“Oh, God.”  
“Are you angry?”  
“God, Francis. No. Come to bed. Please.”  
He smiled. His hand closed around my wrist.  
“Ask me in the morning,” he said, and kissed my cheek. He turned away, into the dark of the apartment.

I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. Francis answered it, of course.  
“Hello? Oh, no, you dialed correctly. It’s -- Yes, I am. Since, um. A month or two, I suppose. What? No. No, I didn’t go through with it. No, I.”  
“Francis? Who is it?”  
Francis smiled at me, and then smiled at whatever the person on the other end was saying. “No, I’m doing just fine. We’re --” He put his hand over the phone, wickedness in his eyes. “Good morning, darling.” My face burned as I smiled at him. The phone erupted with noise. “Yes, yes, Camilla, I’m putting him on.”  
“Darling!” she said, not a greeting, but a question.  
“We --” I said.  
“Well, thank goodness. I suppose I won’t worry about either of you slitting your wrists over the other again then.”  
“I never slit my wrists! And Francis didn’t --”  
“He might as well have. Asking me to marry you? You’ve got everything sorted now, though?”  
“It’s been --”  
“Oh, I’ve got to go. Listen, call me back sometime?”  
“Sure.” She hung up. I replaced the phone. Francis wrapped his arms around me.  
“Come to bed,” I said.  
He smiled at me. Finally, matters progressed.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! talk to me in the comments!! xo bye!!


End file.
